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Title

Wish Lanterns

Young Lives in New China

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Alec Ash

Arcade Publishing (U.S. edition)

March 7, 2017

Author Bio

Alec Ash was born in England in 1986 and is of the same generation as his subjects in Wish Lanterns. After graduating from Oxford, he taught in a Tibetan village and in 2008 moved to Beijing, where he is a writer and journalist. His articles have appeared in The Economist, Dissent, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. He is also a contributing author to the book of reportage Chinese Characters, and founder and editor of the website the Anthill, a writers’ colony of stories from China. He resides in Beijing.

Alec Ash is a writer and journalist in Beijing. He is the author of Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China (Picador, 2016), following the lives of six young Chinese. His articles have been published...

If China will rule the world one day, who will rule China? There are more than 320 million Chinese between the ages of 16 and 30. Children of the one-child policy, born after Mao, with no memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre, they are the first net native generation to come of age in a market-driven, more international China. Their experiences and aspirations were formed in a radically different country from the one that shaped their elders, and their lives will decide the future of their nation and its place in the world.

Wish Lanterns offers a deep dive into the life stories of six young Chinese. Dahai is a military child, netizen, and self-styled loser. Xiaoxiao is a hipster from the freezing north. Fred, born on the tropical southern island of Hainan, is the daughter of a Party official, while Lucifer is a would-be international rock star. Snail is a country boy and Internet-gaming addict, and Mia is a fashionista rebel from far west Xinjiang. Following them as they grow up, go to college, and find work and love, all the while navigating the pressure of their parents and society, Wish Lanterns paints a vivid portrait of Chinese youth culture and of a millennial generation whose struggles and dreams reflect the larger issues confronting China today. —Arcade Publishing